deafPLUS's Leo and Jason are teachers for the day!

Early Tuesday morning of 7 October, we were taken by our trusty deaf guide in Tom in his car, adorned with Liverpool football club memorabilia, to a high school for the deaf, outside Kota Kinabalu, we were greeted by Regina Wong at the gates with the school's principal.  What a welcome we received!

There were kids in their smart school uniforms that were always smiling and fixated with our presence as we entered each classroom, forever gazing at our every movement, we decided to make a fun morning out of it and to keep them entertained as they rarely receive foreign guests. We recognised some of the children that saw our presentation yesterday at the Sabah Society for the Deaf, we acknowledged each other and watched as the teachers taught the lessons in BM (Borneo-Malaysian) Sign Language.

The school was not just a deaf school, it was a mainstream school with a Partially Hearing Unit and all of the children were profoundly deaf using BMSL. The school seemed to be in need of donations for renovation work but they did not lack the resources education-wise.

As we watched a teacher giving an English lesson, we observed the work of the children by reading their exercise books and we were taken aback how neat their hand-writing were. In all honesty, it was marvellous. We were also told that in the past, they were taught every lesson in English and until recently on government's orders that they must be taught in the Borneo-Malaysian language and the principal admitted that it was easier and better for the children to revert back to the old ways.

Jason decided to join the class by pulling up a small chair and sat between the children who couldn't stop giggling, even the teacher & the principal were amused, as the teacher was explaining the grammatical sense of their language, Jason stuck up one arm vying for attention and the lesson was temporarily paused as he attempted to speak what was on the blackboard, their native language and boy, did he pronounce the words very well much to the teacher's delight. After a while, as the lesson flew by, Jason, once again raised his arm and said, jokingly, "Miss, may I go now?" much to the stifled laughter of the adults in the background.  Jason was then challenged by the principal to give the pupils a lesson.

So from being a pupil to teacher, Jason decided to give them a geography lesson, being very bad at art, he managed to outline the map of Europe onto a whiteboard and challenged the children to place where the countries are and the names of its capital cities. They were really intelligent.

We then left to go to the kindergarten school, the Sabah Society for the Deaf, where we gave the presentation the previous day and there were only a class with approximately up to 10 pupils and mainly with additional & learning disabilities, we visited almost every room and they were adequately resourced by way of equipment such as books and other learning aids provided by Gallaudet University.

It was Leo's turn to become the teacher this time with the aid of their teacher and they both taught the children the signs of A-Z in alphabetical order in both the BM & BSL. They also were interested in our names and created new sign names for us which was hilarious!  Also we showed where England is on their map and explained how we travelled on 3 different planes in order to get here much to their delight.

Then Regina, acting as our interpreter took us and Tom to the Elementary School for the Deaf some distance away. Once they saw us, they eagerly surrounded us to talk about England and of course, for the boys, football!!!

We were encouraged to give lessons and we enjoyed it tremendously. What a great day!